“Fascinating,” I couldn’t help but mutter as I observed some strange figures through my scrying construct. With the long days Lia had to spend cooped up in whatever shelter we had prepared for the day, I had taken to use my avian constructs to explore the area around us in a wider range than exploring it on foot would allow me. Using the constructs had the added benefit that I didn’t need to return to base; I merely had to dismiss the construct and wait a bit for my Astral Power to regenerate, something I could easily do while walking, thus allowing for more time spent exploring.
Today, I noticed movement on a forested mountain slope and decided to investigate further by letting the construct fly over the slope in question. What I found was quite surprising. I had expected some animal, something along the lines of wolves, maybe a bear, cougar or a wolverine, all beasts we had seen in the area recently. However, what I found was something entirely different.
On second glance, from a lot closer than my earlier first glance, I thought it was some sort of ape. It had a humanoid body plan, making me wonder if it was a human, but it was also completely clad in mud-brown fur, making that idea somewhat questionable. Plus, the thing didn’t walk upright but hunched over, its arms acting as a second pair of legs and giving it a weirdly loping gait. Thanks to its pelt, the thing blended into the forest incredibly well, especially as it had some twigs and branches trapped in the coarse fur, almost like one of those stealth suits I had seen in movies.
Content to keep watching the thing through my construct, I had the raven land on one of the higher branches, curious about what this thing might do and what it actually might be. The gait, now that I thought about it, vaguely reminded me of some videos I had seen in the past of apes making their way through the forest. I think those had been gorillas, but given that we were somewhere in the vicinity of what once had been the border between the US and Canada, I doubted there were any gorillas in the area. Or any apes, other than humans, for that matter, the closest wild, non-human primates were living somewhere in Mexico and south of that.
Granted, the Change might have redistributed all kinds of animals, so who knew? By now, I was somewhat numb to the alterations to our world that the Change had wrought, and yet, the world managed to surprise me occasionally. As was the case on this occasion, the surprise came the moment I saw the strange ape’s face for the first time. Or rather, the eyes were the surprise, well, the lack of eyes. The thing had the fairly familiar pits of fire I knew from the Shattered, and here, they were filled with a curious silvery-blue fire. A familiar colour, though not in this particular context, usually, a very similar silvery-blue sheen was produced when I worked with Ice Astral Power. Curious, how very curious.
Curious enough to make me want to investigate closely, to see if this was a unique creature or if there were more of it. If there were, catching one of two could yield some interesting results, if only because the thing looked like a Shattered, but, by all indications, it was something else. Or rather, it had become something else.
Watching through the scrying construct revealed very little. The thing was just moving around in the forest, maybe searching for something; it was somewhat hard to tell whether it was or if it was just moving about randomly. It didn’t appear to be hunting, its movement was too casual and idle for that, making it appear more like somebody out for a stroll than somebody moving with intent but I might just be projecting, it wasn’t like I had a ton of experience with these creatures.
“Mom, you want to take a nap now?” Luna interrupted my observations, making me pull a bit of my attention back to my body. We usually tried to make sure at least one of us was awake at all times, and by the looks of it, Luna was up now, giving me the option to sleep. Not that her being awake really changed anything; Silva had been dozing next to me the whole time, keeping an ear out for trouble, and Lia had been awake the whole time, trying to create a new alchemical potion. I believe her current project used some fruits, berries and herbs in an attempt to make the equivalent of a restorative potion.
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Not that she thought she’d be able to make something as exaggerated as those found in video games, but something to speed up the natural healing by an order of magnitude would be pretty impressive. To have wounds close in hours instead of days or bones in days instead of weeks would be a great accomplishment, though it would need some testing to ensure it didn’t suffer from the same problems Luna’s magic occasionally struggled with. Namely, differentiating between healthy growth and unhealthy growth, the second could become cancer far too quickly.
“No, thank you,” I replied, keeping most of my focus on my scrying construct and my eyes closed, “I found something interesting nearby and am keeping an eye on that. I don’t think I’ll sleep any time soon unless that interesting thing turns out to be a lot less impressive than I think it is,” I explained.
“Could you show me? I’m a bit bored,” Luna admitted, and I could feel her sitting down on my lap, something that had been a lot easier when she was smaller. Now, she was almost as tall as me, and even that was only thanks to the growth induced by my Draconic Heritage. Otherwise, she’d be towering above me, making it even more awkward. Sure, every parent had to accept that their children grew up, but it usually took more than a few months for that to happen.
“Sure,” I readily accepted and opened my eyes while putting my arms around my daughter. Then, I conjured an orb of water, letting it hover above my hands and projected the images I could see through my scrying construct into the orb, allowing Luna to see what the scrying construct was observing. Usually, I used tricks like this to create a layer of separation between my mind and the construct but it worked to share what I was seeing, too.
While we were watching, I told Luna what I had observed so far. Thankfully, around that time, the strange shattered finally found what it was looking for, namely, a shrub with quite a few berries it started to pick, one after the other. That action also demonstrated that the thing was somewhat intelligent, as it wove together some sticks and leaves to make a basket, allowing it to transport its harvest. The need to transport indicated that it wasn’t a solitary creature. If it was, it would have eaten its fill and remained nearby to harvest the bush further once it was hungry again. Or it might have enough intelligence to store its harvest somewhere, indicating a different sort of intelligence. So, to see what was going on, my crow continued to follow the thing while Luna and I kept watching as it hopefully moved back to its community or lair, whichever it had.
To my surprise, it didn’t move back down the mountains and into the forested valley below. Instead, it moved further up the mountains, heading into some fairly rough terrain, maybe even above the tree line, where shrubs, grass and rocks dominated the landscape. There, the pelt of the thing demonstrated its usefulness even more, making it incredibly difficult to spot unless one knew where to look. And even then, it could blend in with the environment to the point that the eye easily lost track of it. A simple blink could be enough for it to vanish until its movement drew the eye back to it.
Quite impressive stealth, though it would be interesting to see just how well its stealth would stand up to direct observation. My scrying constructs were good but they couldn’t completely replicate my own attributes, to say nothing of the additional senses I had thanks to some of my traits.
“Oh, my,” Luna muttered once the thing reached its destination. There, hidden between the boulders, rocks and shrubs, was a small group of these altered Shattered. They were just moving about, displaying an obvious group dynamic and social behaviour. At the same time, they also demonstrated higher intelligence when they shared a few of the gathered berries before storing the rest between some rocks. A closer look revealed that they had stored quite a bit of food there, making their planning quite obvious. It also showed that they had some ability to hunt and even butcher meat, as they had some disembowelled carcasses stored in their larder, though some distance away from the fruits. More investigation would be required, but I had already realised that when I saw the smaller version of these creatures run around their valley. Those had either been children when they Shattered, or these creatures had already produced offspring. It would be interesting to see which was true.
